The design brief was simple: bright, jewel like colours, based on a Nautilus/spiral design and to obscure the existing patterned sealed glass unit which the panel is to be fixed in front of.

At 63 cm across, its the biggest fused piece I have made and many thanks to Ray Boundy at Glowworm Glass for the hire of his kiln and watching it for me! I kept the colour scheme simple and bright and by leaving small gaps between the coloured pieces the design has an orderly segmented feel. I have brought in more flowing, organic feel to the piece by putting a powder between the sheets of glass; this reacts with the glass when heated in the kiln making small bubbles within the 2 layers of glass. I have printed patterns in glass paint on the reverse by drip painting and then sponge printing with transparent paint, this gave the glass lots of texture, helping to disguise the existing patterned glass.  The darker red, blue and green areas have been acid etched. To do this I printed small circles onto the glass with PVA glue (using various pen lids as stampers) and the glue acted as a resist to the acid wash, which has frosted the glass.

The panel will rest in the existing window frame and be secured in place with a few small screws and some sealant; so easily adding great interest to a bland bathroom and getting another layer of glazing as a bonus!

Its only a couple of weeks until Exeter Open Studios 2013 and my studio is a slightly frantic hive of activity! The big clear out happened this week, I have no idea how it gets so full of rubbish and where the piles of random stuff comes from, but its a good chance to get really ship shape and its much nicer going to work in a clean and tidy space!

I am still finishing off the pieces for the accompanying Gloss Gallery Exhibition of works and I haven’t even got to the framers yet! BUT I have done some successful castings in paper clay moulds and I am really pleased with the resulting dragonflies (which I will glue on to the finished leaded panel) and my latest lino cuts are finally looking how I want them too.

It looks like it is going to be an excellent Open Studios event with lots of local artists opening their doors to the local public, so if you are in the Exeter area please come and say hi and see if I ever finished any of these works in progress! If you would like to download a map just click here  and if you would like to see who all the other artists are please click here 

glass pieces up for grabs!

VALENTINE GIVE AWAY!!!

I have lots of pretty hand painted glass scraps up for grabs for anyone who might have a use for them!

I just completed a large order of lace hearts, I paint off cuts of art glass with patterns based on Honiton lace, bond the paint permanently to the glass in the kiln and then cut out the heart shapes…..this leaves me with lots of pretty scraps. I have no need for these, but they are too pretty to throw away.

SO if you have a good use for these (I am guessing this is one for mosaic artists) then they are yours for free! Just leave a comment to say what you would make with them (and obviously a contact address) and I will choose my fav idea and send them to the recipient, easy as that.

Some of the pieces are very small, mostly they are around 2-3 cm in width, all uneven sizes and because they are glass they are sharp! I have about 1 kg, so it could make a good project!

Yesterday I needed to take LOTS of photos of olive trees in the Mediterranean Dome for a new commission I am working on for Olive Tree Therapies  a gorgeous new beauty salon in Exeter (more of that another day) but I also did lots of snapping in the other, bigger dome.

We didn’t have to look far, Castle Drogo  was a winter wonderland today and we had a great time sledging in the deserted peace of the magical castle on Dartmoor.

The light was really unusual today. I often find this in the South West, there is something in the damp misty air which transfuses light in a unique, sometimes eerie way and I got to take lots of photos, which to me is the modern day sketch book. I take lots of photos and refer back to them often.

I have a couple of great commissions to get started on and lots of exhibitions lined up for later in the year, but this week is all about printing on glass. I have been experimenting with this for sometime now and I have joined a print artist collective at TAAG in Teignmouth to help me get back on my printing feet (its been a long time since I used these techniques).

I am quite pleased with some of the results, see what you think, they are direct mono prints, lino cut prints and block prints using polystyrene and foam.

handmade glass birds

I have had these little fella’s hanging around in my studio for ages, they are lovely, but a bit too delicate to sell. But enough of my friends and customers have commented on how much they like them for something to happen to them; so I have decided it is give away time!

The birds are made from green and kingfisher blue glass painted with copper paints which have been fired in the kiln and they are edged in thin lead and have little wire feet and crests soldered on. They will look great hanging on a tree or in a sunny window, but they don’t like to be bent so need to be treated a little bit carefully!

handmade glass birds

To win one of these all you need to do is follow me on twitter and tweet about the give away or follow me on Facebook and share this blog post. I will pick 4 winners at random (I usually get my 4 year old to point at some lucky likers/followers) on the 1st December 2012 so they will be with their new owners before Christmas!

Good luck!

autumn leaves, acer

Autumn is such an inspirational season for me; I am fresh back to work after the summer holidays with the kids and I can concentrate on new ideas for the busy winter period.  This year I can’t stop looking at trees, there has been some fabulous colour on the trees this autumn! Luckily I have got to indulge my tree

stained glass beech tree

fetish with a recently finished beech tree commission for the front door of a new build house on a farm called ‘Nut Tree Farm,’ sounds delightful hey?

beech tree, painted leaf detail

Autumnal animals were my inspiration for the upcoming Gloss Gallery 20×20 Exhibition, an art exhibition and auction where 20% of the proceeds go to Hospiscare

I also have lots of my smaller pieces in the Themla Hulbert Gallery Present Makers 2012 Exhibition, including my owls and some lovely new stained glass flower wreaths. I haven’t had a chance to go see the exhibition myself yet, but when I delivered my stuff there was some great work being dropped off by others, so well worth a visit!

I am juggling a lot of shows and exhibitions in the lead up to Christmas, but I also have a fabulous commission project which I am now starting, I am direct printing from Ivy leaves, which I will then acid etch………more of that another day, just a little photo of the Ivy being arranged on the glass 

The panel gets lots of natural and artificial light at different times of day/night and will hopefully be dramatic in a totally different way at night, when the reds and yellows will be picked up more on the first floor. and the design was inspired by the client’s love of mountaineering and the strong, warm colours of the landscape of the Himalayas. The strong colours look great against the white walls and is a mixture of mouth blown Polish glass and Spectrum glass of varying textures. I created the effect of the sunrise bouncing off the mountain side by painting ground up glass (frit) onto the mountain pieces and then firing them in the kiln, to fuse with the streaky glass base

First I cut the glass

Then I paint ground glass onto the pieces of glass and fuse them in the kiln. My first attempt I fired it too hot and although I loved the effect of the fused glass the pieces had changed shape too much to fit into the leaded panel and I had to both redo this and rethink my design a little.

 Once I had got the fusing right I was ready to lead up, cement and fishing the panel as with any traditional stained glass panel and then it is just a case of fitting it into the window frame.

I emptied a colourful kiln full of flowers on Saturday morning, they have come out very well and as well as making up swags of flowers for sale in Insideout I am also going to keep some back to make an applique glass panel, I think they will lend themselves well to this.

I prepared lots of fusing tester panels on Saturday afternoon to be fired on Sunday. Sunday morning I loaded up the kiln and paid close attention to the cycled and the rapid cooling phase of fusing glass as I have been suffering from devitrification problems when fusing with recycled glass (where the glass crystalises when it is cooling, creating a matt granulated appearance to the back side of the fused piece). Hopefully I got it right today, we shall see tomorrow!

Today has been relentlessly rainy, I had to empty my gazebo gallery early as everything was getting soggy and windswept! I only had one visitor on my last day of Devon Open Studios,  she stayed for quite along time as it was raining SO hard she would have got drenched and so we had a great chat! But I would not have wanted to go anywhere myself today and as the gazebo was out of action it was probably for the best. But I got lots of panels cemented and got to watch a film with my kids as well, which is the best way to spend a Sunday afternoon anyway!

My studio can go back to being my own private little space again now for another year! Thanks for everyone who helped me advertise my event, handed out leaflets and put up posters at their work. Thanks also to everyone who came to visit me its been fun.